There was a great article in this Sunday’s New York Times about music guru Rick Rubin, who was hired last May to be co-head of Columbia records. Rubin took the job under unusual conditions. He never goes to a corporate office. He doesn’t have a phone or a desk. He doesn’t travel. What he does do is just listen to music, select artists, and help them make their material stronger. Rubin has one of the strongest track records in the business, serving as a producer to stars including the Dixie Chicks, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Weezer, and Neil Diamond. It can take him years to finish an album. As the artists write songs, they are constantly scrutinized and criticized by Rubin. The Dixie Chick’s Natalie Maines says that “he listens with his eyes closed” and then he gives precise and instant advice like “You need a new chorus.” Rick Rubin is not your usual executive. He is, however, deeply knowledgeable about the process of making music.
Two things about this story struck me. The first is about creativity. It is interesting that Columbia has paired Rubin with a traditional executive named Steve Barnett. Barnett is the guy who has an office and a phone has to go to all those corporate meetings. And a guy like Rubin needs a partner like that. That’s one of the things that I realized when I was writing Weird Ideas That Work. Whenever there is someone who seems to be breaking all the rules – -be it Richard Branson of Virgin, Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, or Beatle John Lennon — there always seem to be a “straight man” (or woman), or a lot of them, who provide cover and does the routine and often less glamorous stuff that needs to be done – John Lennon admitted toward the end of his life that he never could have been so creative (and so difficult) without the “cover” provided by Paul McCartney and manager Brian Epstein.
The other thing that struck me about this story was that the move was lot like what Ford Motor Company did in 1985. They appointed a lifetime Ford executive, Don Petersen, as head of the company. The comparison between Petersen and Rubin may seem odd, but when I interviewed Petersen in 1990’s, a few years after he retired, he said something that really stuck with me. He said something like: “I guess that they were so desperate to save the company that that they actually appointed someone to be CEO who knew something about making cars and trucks, not another bean counter.” Under Petersen’s leadership, they came out with the Ford Taurus and massively increased the quality of their cars and trucks. Jeff Pfeffer also told me a story – he has talked to Petersen more than I have – that goes something like this: During the first meeting that Petersen went to as CEO, he pointed out after an hour or so that no one in the room had yet mentioned the words “car” or “truck,” and perhaps that was part of their problem.
Indeed, when Jeff Pfeffer and I started looking into leaders that were skilled at turning knowledge into action, who weren’t just masters of smart talk, a pattern emerged – they actually understood something about the work they were leading and the product or service that their firm is providing. Indeed, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Martha Sterwart, and Steve Jobs certainly have their quirks, as do the Larry and Serge at Google, but I think it is no accident that those folks know so much about the products that their companies produce and the markets where they are sold. So, to me, the move to hire Rubin is a lot like the move to Petersen – – both companies reached a point of desperation where they felt compelled to find someone who had the deepest possible knowledge about what they make and sell.
Finally, what should leaders do who end-up leading a company where they don’t understand the work? That happens a lot, and executive firms often press for leaders from outside the company or industry to take CEO jobs. One answer is provided by Bill George, who led Medtronic during the period that it went from “Good to Great,” and is profiled in Jim Collins’ best-seller. George is now a Harvard Business School Professor and author of a couple of books. When he took over Medtronic, he didn’t know much about the medical device industry, so rather than jumping in and ordering everyone around right away, he spent most of his first year in hospitals, watching doctors install medical devices, talking to them, to patients, and to executives and managers at hospitals who often make the decisions to buy the devices. After he learned a bit about the business and the work done by its customers, George then started devoting more time to more traditional CEO activities.
So, the lesson is that organizations are lot easier to manage well when the people in charge understand the work itself. They can provide better guidance, they know when to get out of the way, and they are better able to tell when an employee or external advisor has good — or bad — ideas.
Leave a Reply